Thursday, November 27, 2008

Nielsen, Danish dynamite

Most classical music lovers know the name of the most important Danish composer Carl Nielsen (1865-1931), but it is surprising how many of them have actually hardly heard little or nothing of his compositions - in contrast to say his contemporary Sibelius. To my taste his six symphonies and three concertos are amongst the finest examples of those genres in the first half of the 20th century. This Naxos CD of his concertos, for violin, for clarinet and for flute, makes an excellent introduction. The beautiful violin concerto dates from 1911, and is a typical late romantic dramatic concerto - showing off that the composer played the instrument himself. The flute concerto from 1926 is perhaps more original, if only by the choice of the solo instrument. But for me the main concerto here is the clarinet concerto from 1928, a stunningly modern work, with an important role for the snare drum as antagonist of the clarinet. Early critics remarked that it sounded like a concerto from another planet. For me this is the second best clarinet concerto of all time, surpassed only by Mozart's masterpiece. The performances on this Naxos CD, with its running time close to 80 minutes, are excellent. Highly recommended as a real bargain introduction to this somewhat overlooked giant.

The Blogger

About me:Dutchman, married to a beautiful and highly talented artist from Shanghai. Although my education (PhD chemistry) is very much associated with the left side of the brain, I like to use my right side for my hobbies: music, art, photography.

About this blog:I started this blog in August 2006, just wanting to share what I considered interesting pieces of visual art and music. I suffered from blogging blues for most of 2008, but making a fresh start in October of that year has done wonders for my inspiration.In case you did not notice, most posts end with a small symbol... just click that for the relevant link.All pictures in my blog are hosted on blogger - if some do not show up (the red cross syndrome) it is a blogger hiccup. Right click and selecting "show picture" should do the trick.

About the reconstruction:

End March 2017 I converted thousands of posts to draft, in order to sort out potential copyright issues. Many of these will be restored in the course of the year.

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Most of the images used in this blog are either mine, or they are used with explicit permission of the creators, or they are in the public domain. Album cover and movie poster images are sourced on the internet and they are considered fair use for discussion at a non-profit blog.

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